Hoodoo
by Moonstone369
Summary: Post Series In the aftermath of the finale, the remainder of Damon and Elena's patchwork family have retreated to the Salvatore boarding house to nurse the wounds of their grief together. Damon is handling his own pain and new reality remarkably well, but he's keeping Elena at an arm's length. They'll have to overcome the chasm between them if they want to hold onto their future.
1. New Reality

**Hoodoo**

_Come into my life_

_Regress into a dream_

_We will hide_

_Build a **new reality**_

_-Muse_

This sprawling house is as full as I've ever seen it, the closest it's come to being used as a boarding house since before I first stepped across the threshold. The remaining arms of our patchwork family tree have taken refuge within these walls. We're tucked into its many rooms, nursing the phantom limb pain of all the severed branches.

Caroline compartmentalizes her grief in a spectacularly Caroline fashion. It haunts the attic, where she is the curator of Stefan's memories as she carefully sifts, cleans, and tucks into boxes the collected artifacts of his extended lifetime. If she can manage a smile for her girls, she makes it downstairs for breakfast where she is the doting mother, sister, and friend. She accepts my bone gripping hugs, laughs with us through tears welling near the surface, and tucks Lizzie and Josie into bed with a story or three, before retreating back into quiet isolation.

On the days she can't manage, her barely-brother-in-law is the only company she permits. He leaves the diner style breakfast spread he makes for us every morning in the kitchen while he portions out a tray and disappears upstairs with it. Sometimes he's gone a few minutes, sometimes a few hours, before he reemerges with a stack of boxes that he stows in neat rows at the far end of the eight-car garage.

He's still rebelling against the limits imposed by his newly-minted humanity. I've learned better than to express my concern. Instead, I watch in silence as he descends the stairs, straining under the weight he's laden upon himself. I bite my lip against worries of him toppling down the narrow and steep attic stairs original to a house built before safety standards or building codes. He smirks triumphant upon each return with beading sweat wetting his dark hairline and cups my cheek to pull at my bottom lip with his thumb until it's free of my worrying teeth. His mouth smiles against my lips as he presses a kiss there and disappears into the kitchen without a word to scrub it clean. The trail of his fingertips against my skin and the taste of his lips tingle with his love but burn with the longing for more.

Bonnie buries her grief deeper. Or maybe, it's just more difficult for me to see when it's for a man she loved and lost all while I slumbered, oblivious to her joy and suffering. She stays in the room next to Lizzie and Josie's and spends most of her days in the company of the little Saltzman twins. They share her newly rediscovered well of magic, and she guides them with a gentle hand in the art of floating tea parties or animating the illustrations of their favorite storybooks.

After the girls succumb to dreamland, She sits in front of the fire plucking at the strings of an acoustic guitar. Her best friend—in my absence that's what he's become for her—pours them each a finger of bourbon, hands her the cut crystal glass, and joins her on the opposing sofa. This house used to have as many elaborate and well stocked alcohol carts and bars as it does fireplaces. Not surprising, considering that if a fire were blazing in the grate there was usually a Salvatore brother with a drink in his hand standing over it.

Now, all have gone save for this one, locked behind the glass doors of an antique hutch. A nightcap shared between two friends is the only time I see him partake in the bourbon he used to swallow down like tea. He pulls from his glass with thoughtful sips instead of with the sexy aggression he used to throw it back. They exchange quiet, easy conversation, her tinkling laugh, the deep hum of his throat. Some nights I curl into his side as he lifts his arm and pulls me into him. I let their rhythmic back and forth and Bonnie's lilting guitar settle over me like a warm blanket. Others, I leave them to it.

The fresh, horrific grief I had to leave Ric with to begin my forced exile is very cleverly buried beneath the adoration of his daughters. But I see the edge of desperation in his eyes when he watches them, when he joins in their games and imaginary play. I see the way their gravity has shifted his whole world to them, and the weight he carries—acceptance that nothing else in the world matters as much as them. Even after losing so much before and surviving it, he has so much to lose that the loss of it would be the end of everything.

Apart from the dinners we all share, Ric spends most of his time outside the house. He's still dealing with the Armory, a place I've heard about a few times in Bonnie and Caroline's brief recounts of what I've missed. It's one I have no desire to ever visit. Between overseeing the excavation of a building scorched by hellfire and playing with his daughters, his spare time is all invested in his plans for a school for supernatural children.

Hardest for me to grasp is his avoidance of us all. He avoids topics of discussion with Bonnie or Caroline that stray outside the lines of the girls and their magical education. Any small talk with the rest of us is restricted to the domestic topics necessitated by the sharing of this house. He doesn't look me in the eye. And something has irrevocably fractured between Ric and his former best drinking buddy.

The only explanation I've dared to extract from the latter, "He killed me; I deserved it."

Matt hasn't committed to staying with us. But that first night he came by to see me after Stefan's funeral, I convinced him that a family meal was better than eating alone at the Grille every night. I wasn't sure enough of the tentative truce or forgiveness between Matt and his former vampire nemesis to tell him who had prepared the meal, but he's been back almost every night since. Matt still insists on returning to work after dinner, and I'm pretty sure he spends most nights on the sofa in the sheriff's office. Once or twice, his oversight of Mystic Fall's restoration has worn him so weary that he hasn't made it past the oversized leather sofa in our library.

Lizzie and Josie are tiny balls of light and energy that scatter color and joy in the farthest reaches and corners of the house, corners I didn't even know existed until a marathon day of epic hide and seek made me familiar with all of them.

Upon our first introduction they had many questions for me about my extended sleep, a multitude relating to my feelings on princesshood.

"But she didn't need a prince to wake her up," Josie whispered loudly to her sister.

"Yeah, because Aunt Bonnie used her magic to break the spell," Lizzie said.

They've since taken to calling me Princess Elena, something that always manages to delight their Uncle Damon when he's in the vicinity.

He is their elusive playmate. While the rest of the house, including myself, seem to be at the mercy of their constant whim, always willing to be sucked into their world free of burdens and grief, Uncle Damon's willingness to participate is one extreme or the other. He throws himself with abandon into their joy, nearly breaking his neck to find an even more thrilling hiding spot than the one before, or he's aloof, unswayed by their insistence that he join in their games. The days he denies them attention are usually those Ric spends at home. He pulls back from them in their father's presence, retreats as I've seen him do in the past when he didn't believe he belonged.

"Sorry munchkins," he tells them in response to their pleas that he throw them into the air and then fling them in circles. "Don't you two have a magic lesson you're late for?"

But they're resilient to his apathy. They know his mornings belong to them. Damon is always the earliest up, followed by Lizzie and Josie. On more than one occasion I've watched from the kitchen door as the girls giggle from stools, one on either side of him, stirring pancake batter. The only two people in the world I've seen Damon look on with affection after making a disastrous mess of his kitchen. He is patient with them, attentive, guards them constantly from danger or injury.

My heart swells and clenches on these mornings in a bittersweet twang. I see glimpses of a future with the man I love in these moments, of our family, the life that we fought so hard to make a possibility. But I've only been awake weeks, and this unconventional stability we've built with each other in the wake of devastation I can't quite grasp, is a holding pattern. I have in my reach everything I've ever wanted on the back of sacrifice by so many of the people I love.

Now that we're so close, I'm so much more desperate for our future to begin than I've ever been.

I'm afraid it's slipping away.

"A crown! A crown!" Lizzie says, jumping up and down.

"A kitty!" Her sister joins her.

He makes them each a special pancake in the shape of whatever they demand. When he started out, simple shapes like hearts or flowers turned into unrecognizable blobs the girls scarfed down anyways. But I've since caught him watching tutorials on YouTube.

One day last week he came home from a trip to the hobby store with a bag of precision-nozzled plastic squeeze bottles and a bunch of food dye. His sense of hearing far less keen than before, he froze when he spotted me giggling across the entranceway.

He pointed at me and narrowed his eyes. "Say nothing." The hint of a smile tugged at his lips.

"Princess Elena!" One of the girls will screech as they spot me in the doorway.

His smile will stretch across his face, etching lines into his cheeks. Lines I imagine marking him permanently as the skin around his eyes begins to crease and gray begins to fleck his dark hair.

"Uncle Damon," the other will tug at his sleeve. "Princess Elena needs a special pancake too!"

"Does she?" He'll look up at me with a grin and a raised eyebrow. "What'll it be, Princess?"

"A crow," I'll answer like always. An omen of my future Bonnie gave me many years ago that I've taken as a good luck charm instead. He's gotten quite good at them.

The girls'll run around the island to join me on the barstools. The three of us devour pancake masterpieces as he cracks eggs, whisks batter, and ladles out the plain round cakes for the rest of the house.

Brother. Best Friend. Lost Friend. Former Enemy. Uncle Damon. Pancake Master. The Love of My Life.

In my absence, he has forged a place in the lives of everyone in the world that matters to me, has made his own place in their lives and their happiness. But before them, before me—

He's lost the one person that loved him unconditionally before any of us.

Damon's grief is so heavy, I am constantly in fear that it will crush him. Like the boxes packed to the brim with the weight of his brother's life, Damon acts as though it is something he must bear all at once and bear alone. His love for me shines brilliantly through his smiles and his touches, but he tempers them with a restraint that makes panic crawl under my skin.

He cares for the house and the people in it with unrelenting diligence and love, anticipating everyone's needs with amazing efficiency. He lives in the kitchen, pouring over his phone for new recipes, content in his ability to fill everyone's stomachs if not the holes torn through their lives by loss. He is quieter, more reserved, but if you leave an opening he never passes up the opportunity to add his snarky and colorful commentary. His pain is there, but he is coping remarkably well, far better than the drunken depressive spiral both Bonnie and Caroline have admitted that they expected.

And that terrifies me.

As close as they've grown in my absence our friends and family have never seen the other half of Damon I have. He kept it that way on purpose, distracted them with his explosive impulses, the sting of his words, elaborate displays of off-kilter and unstable emotions. In the shadows, he formed calculated plans to protect me, his brother, the people we loved and he grew to love as well. The sacrifices he made were never showy, the pain he took on only flashed to the surface when no one was there to see. He accepted everyone's disdain and hatred, so no one else should have to bear it. And part of him always believed he deserved it.

The way he retreated into himself after he found out about the sire bond frequently haunted my magical sleep. Because once Damon decides he is not worth something—sacrifice, compromise, friendship, love—he is unreachable.

There are moments when we're alone, tucked into the only quiet, isolated part of the house that's ours alone, where the tightly knotted cords holding him together loosen. He holds me tighter, his kisses deepen with desperation. His chest heaves against heavy breaths as he presses me against him and curls bruising fingers into my shoulders and sides.

His mouth and fingers trail searing heat against my skin as he removes my clothes. He grips my wrists tight as he restricts me from reciprocating. His breath is hot on my neck. When he's sure I'll behave, he releases my hands and traces the line of my stomach to pop the fly of my jeans or up the inside of my thigh under the skirt of my dress to tug at the elastic of my panties. His voice vibrates in his chest against me and shudders in my ear.

"Come apart for me, Elena."

These nights end in my body alone in it's own heavy unwound ecstasy, pressed against the hard and straining desperation of his body's need to join me in the release he won't allow me to give him. Trembling, unsatisfied against me, he presses a kiss against my closed eyes and turns away from me. My body screams at his absence.

The first night, my voice shook with all my doubts and fears. "Damon?"

His blue eyes, glossy and wet with unshed tears, met mine. "Please, I just need a little longer."

He rolled away. I used to love the luxurious size of our bed, but now I curse it for all the space it allows between us. .

I told myself that I could wait as long he needed. But I'm not so sure anymore that he was asking for more time to grieve his brother. Each time, the desolate anguish in his eyes grows larger, the intensity of his touches burn further into my flesh and bones. It feels more and more as if his agonized plea for more time is something different, a frenzied selfish delay of a goodbye he believes is inevitable.

I don't press him for answers anymore. I don't want tonight to be the night he decides to begin some self-imposed exile or trigger some form of self-destruct he believes he deserves. I wait for him to slip from bed and extinguish all the lights. I lay silent and still, waiting for the soft lilt of a snore he acquired along with his human vulnerability, before crawling across the massive expanse of bed separating us and pressing my face between his shoulder blades. In the morning, I'll wake alone in an empty bed. He's already downstairs starting coffee and drawing a little girl's heart's desire in pancake batter. He's retreating further and further out of reach.

I'm scared to death of losing him forever. What if I already have?

**Um . . . This is not a You Become update (just in case you hadn't noticed by now), but if you've read this far whether or not you've read You Become, I want to thank you.**

**I've wanted to write a post series fic since the show ended, but because I was determined not to let anything derail me from You Become, I put it on the back burner for a long time, and it's been spiraling out in fantastic head canons of what I imagined happening during, around, and after the events of the finale for like the past what is it now. . . (almost two years? No, that can't be right.) And then you know, other things derailed my from You Become anyway, like book cons and NaNoWriMo and trying to draft an original novel.**

**So, this happened.**

**I'm not sure what it is yet. I would like it to be more than this and have idea fuel to make it more (in fact I even had a ch2 written until I lost it to the digital ether and irresponsible back up habits), but it also has the ability to sit here on its own until the day I do decide to flesh it out. But I do know the stuff I see adding will not be incredibly plot driven as it is angsty character driven stuff.**

**In a lot of ways I was very happy with the way the show ended and understand why it couldn't be the 3 day long delena angst fest I would have needed to feel some form of satisfaction. But while we got a happy endgame, the majority of the finale was a lot of tragedy, and I desperately need to see some of the emotional fallout and what I know had to have been a rocky recovery for Delena, their family and friends. While a few of the post series fics to come out since the show ended have been great, (Notably: A New Normal by NorahB) none have quite scratched that itch for me. If you're hoarding a secret stash of fics about Damon sobbing, cradling Elena's still sleeping body in the boiler room waiting for Bonnie to meet him and lift Kai's spell after waking up and realizing what Stefan had done, or the days leading up to Stefan's funeral, or the days or weeks after Elena wakes please please share.**

**Anyways, this is my beginning of an attempt at that. The title of the story and this chapter come both from a song by Muse that completely encapsulates the mood of this story for me and a type of rock formation found primarily in North America that is caused by weathering and looks like a tall narrow spire of rock capped with a wider much larger chunk of rock. It seemed like an aptly angsty metaphor for coping with the burden of guilt and the erosion of grief at the same time.**

**You Become still exists, I still have plans to update it someday, I just have to stop promising next week, next month, or soon, because I fail at delivering on those promises. I'm sorry, guys. But if you enjoyed this, and would be interested to see more, please leave a review and let me know. I love you all.**


	2. A Dumb Screenshot of Youth and a

**Hey Guys! How ya been? So, I've got a few requests to update this story, and had some inspiration finally to rewrite and finish the half chapter I lost to the ether. This is from a new POV, and when I write any subsequent chapters I'm probably gonna hop around different POVs unlike You Become. But I'm sticking to first person perspective, because it's what I like to write especially for angsty character stuff. So the format from here on out will be multiple POVs, but only one POV per chapter all in first person. **

**Just want to shout out thanks to all my readers who continue to read my updates even if they are few and far between. Love you guys, and enjoy!**

**A Dumb Screenshot of Youth and a Superglued Human of Proof**

_What a strange being you are_

_God knows where I'd be if you hadn't found me sitting all_

_Alone in the dark_

_**A dumb screenshot of youth**_

_Watch how a cold broken teen will desperately lean upon a_

_**Superglued human of proof**_

_What the hell would I be without you?_

_Brave face, talk so lightly, hide the truth_

_-Dodie_

My shins sink into the carpet in front of the antique armoire. The one I've avoided touching or looking at for weeks despite the fact that I've been living almost entirely in this room. My legs are folded underneath me, and every sensation is suddenly overwhelming. The material of my jeans is too coarse where it stretches taut against my knees, the fabric of my blouse scratches against my skin. I try to take a deep breath and breathe through it, but the air tastes like soot and dust and the decay of paper and bookbinder's glue. My throat constricts with thick swallows and my chest tightens painfully. The room is too bright, so I close my eyes and dig the heels of my palms into the tops of my thighs. I rub my hands down the surface of my legs with so much pressure that I can hear the strain of the garment struggling to stay intact, the fibers of the denim creaking and snapping with the force.

All of the other sounds of the house swarm in, dog-piling on the exhausting amount of stimulus flooding my body.

_Children laughing, my children. _

_The scrape of metal against ceramic. _

_A creaking step—the third from the top of the first landing._

_The thunderous rush of water as the toilet in the downstairs parlor bathroom flushes._

_Voices, conversation, breathing. The rhythmless discord of too many heartbeats._

_The thick wetness of food being chewed and swallowed._

I curl my fingers into fists as the disgust washes over me in a wave of warm nausea. Seams pop and rip as the fabric clinging to my skin gives way, crumpling under the strength of my inhuman grip. I start to pull in breaths now, but they're too fast, too harsh. The air stings my lungs, salty wet stings my cheeks.

Shit, I really loved these jeans.

I choke against a bit of inappropriate laughter.

_The groan of the attic stairs under the weight of steps._

I gasp air, but can't breathe, clench my eyes shut so tight that bursts of light explode behind my eyelids, drown in the rush of my own blood in my ears. C'mon Caroline, pull yourself together, dammit. I drag in one long rattling breath full of chemicals and dead skin cells, mold and mildew, and cough it all back out again.

_The twist of rusty metal, a change in pressure in the air around me, the thud of heavy boots against the floorboards, a sharp hiss of a breath, the clink of dishes, the slosh of liquid, a heartbeat louder than all the rest, the smell of warm leather and warm skin and warm blood, the grate of bone and tendon as another pair of knees sink into the carpet behind me._

_Weight and warmth._

I turn into his embrace, press my shoulder against his chest, and bury my face in the crook of his neck. Wetness blooms into the soft cotton of his shirt beneath my cheek, and a pang of regret distracts me for a moment at the thought of soiling his clothes with my tears and snot. But it's so damn soft. I need to figure out where Damon buys his clothes.

The idea of adding Damon's name to my existing list of shopping buddies which as of now includes only Bonnie and Elena causes another peal of sobbing laughter.

He flattens the hair against the back of my head as he cradles it against his collar and presses his chin to my crown. His other arm wraps around my torso and squeezes me firmly into him. He smells like leather and blood, and I can hear his pulse thump in his neck, but it's alright. Here buried in it, in the glorious humanness of Damon Salvatore, it leaves no room for anything else. Without the responsibility of supporting my own weight, the tightness in my chest loosens, my muscles unwind, and I start to breathe slow, trembling breaths.

I'm not sure how long it is we stay like that. I try to avoid thinking about how is it a man I despised more than anything became like a brother to me, became exactly the person I needed to get me through this. I never expected to be married for less than a day, but if I had to lose Stefan so soon I am at least thankful for that much. For the fleeting moments that Stefan and I had where we both only belonged to one another, but also the family it allowed me to inherit.

Because without the undeniable (though probably iffy) legality and paperwork of it all, it damn well may have taken us a century to get over our respective pride long enough to admit that that's what we are.

Damon doesn't have quite that long anymore—another bittersweet reminder I've been trying and failing to avoid.

I'm the only one left. My heartbeat jumps in my chest.

This isn't the last time I'll feel this kind of pain. Someday everyone I love will crumble to dust just like my husband. That's what they want, what they've chosen, because it's the natural order of things.

My breath starts to pick up again, and I clench my eyes shut tighter.

One by one until I'm the only one left, beautiful and unchanging, forever seventeen. Alone.

Damon's grip on me squeezes to the point of being constricting, but it's comforting, like an anchor holding me here keeping me from disappearing.

My spiraling thoughts start to slow and after an immeasurable amount of time listening to his heartbeat in his chest until mine thudding in my ears slows to match it, my muscles loosen and he releases me. I sink back into the carpet, but his warm smell still engulfs me as I decompress, shakily releasing a long, heavy breath. I'm able to unclench my fingers and rest them in my lap over the ruination of my jeans before looking up at him.

If there's one thing I've never appreciated enough about Damon Salvatore—because my pride definitely won't let me admit that there's more than one—it's his complete and utter lack of pity. Instead, he's looking at me as he has many times since we buried his brother and my husband, with a mix of kindness, fellowship, understanding, and most extraordinary of all to me, admiration. It's certainly not as if I don't deserve it, because really, what's not to admire? But Damon's admiration is respect, it's loyalty and devotion. I still wonder at how long I fought for the respect of everyone around me when now I think perhaps I've had his for much longer than I realized.

Damon props himself in a seated position on the carpet with his arms extended out behind him and looks up at the armoire behind me. I can see him settle under the weight of an invisible force. He scoffs and rolls his eyes before looking back at me with a gentle smile.

"Such a hoarder, my brother," he says, "I've been trying to get him to KonMarie this crap for ages, but the idiot was convinced all of it sparked joy or whatever. I bet he never once thought about the poor sap who'd get stuck hauling all the heavy ass boxes down those steep as fuck stairs after he kicked it." I try to ignore the bite of his words, because I at least know him well enough now to know that this particular brand of disparaging humor is how Damon copes. He sees my face, and his eyes soften with apology. His chest shakes from a quiet chuckle. "Who am I kidding? Of course he knew it'd be me. Probably thought I'd be chomping at the bit to toss out all this junk, turn it into a home theater or something."

I sigh and offer him a small smile.

"You know," he continues. "That's not a bad idea for one of the empty rooms downstairs. Put a stop to your relentless munchkins asking why the house has five living rooms and no TV."

One of those things Damon and I have in common—another list I refuse to acknowledge the length of—is our inability to suffer silence in the face of situations we don't know how to deal with. At least if he's filling the silence, it means I don't have to. I look down at my hands in my lap, and he pauses for a moment. His hand reaches out for my chin and nudges it upward with a knuckle so I'm looking at him again, the coy sarcasm gone, his eyes set and serious. "You're doing an amazing job, Caroline, with all of it." There's that admiration again, his voice so thick with it I have to fight against the prick of tears in the corner of my eyes just as I thought I'd got them under control. "But none of this is your responsibility unless you want it to be."

I swallow and nod as he drops his hand, clearing my throat to be sure that my voice won't shake now that I'm finally prepared to use it. "No, Damon. I wanted to. I needed—"

I needed this these past weeks. To be able to sort his possessions, to clean away the clutter and dust with care. It's how I've sorted through my feelings and my memories. It's like being able to make a place for Stefan there, to put him away so I can live the rest of my potentially very long life without ever losing or forgetting his place in it.

This cabinet full of journals however, over a century of his thoughts and feelings buried in decaying ink and paper—they're different. They're the cumulation of everything—good and bad—that made the man I loved. And yet, my part in them is so small by percentage, only significant in it's coming at the end. Had I been the one to remain human and he forever young whether I blinked out of his life suddenly or faded from it with age, would I mean so much to it in the grand scheme of things?

Is it okay if what we were to each other wasn't everything, but it was enough?

Damon watches me and waits. Perhaps he's better with comfortable silence than I gave him credit for. "I needed this," I say. "But the journals, I don't know if I can."

He glances up at them again then back at me before leaning forward and taking my hand in his. He leans in even further and whispers conspiratorially, "Then don't."

I narrow my eyes. "Damon—" I start.

"No Care, listen." He pulls back to a normal sitting position and volume, but grips my hand in his harder. "I've had my shot at the grief thing a handful of times, but I never really learned how to move past the whole denial and anger bit. I'm no expert at the closure aspect of it, but unless a dusty pile of an overdramatic vampire's memoirs are the only way for you to find it, I say screw it."

"I should at least box them up like everything else," I say, because I don't know how to not be _doing_ something, and if I don't have to do this then there's nothing left to _do_. I'm not the best at handling nothing left to do. I must wear all of that doubt on my face. Damon reads it with relative ease before nodding as if he understands.

"Have you ever laid eyes on a diary in your life without taking a peak at what's inside?" His mouth turns up in a half smile. "Trust me, nobody's got time for the Stefan Salvatore saga, especially if they like staying conscious."

"I have time." As the words fall out, I'm not sure who they're meant for.

Damon shakes his head, his expression in earnest again. "There's been a fair bit of philosophizing and reflecting going around lately about the whole human condition thing. Finite time, yada, yada. How it's supposed to mean more and all that bullshit because it comes to an end or whatever. But my time isn't any more valuable than yours just because I have a fancy new expiration date. I don't care how long you're gonna live, Blondie, nobody's got time for shit that makes them miserable when they don't have to be."

My lips part for words that aren't ready for them yet.

"Ah, don't look so surprised." He smirks. "I'm capable of occasional wisdom. Like this—" He raises his eyebrows in a dramatic gesture and pauses for effect. "You may have more days left than the rest of us, Newest Salvatore, but we all only get one whack at today." His smirk makes an even more remarkable return. I can't help the smile that responds.

"You got that from a fortune cookie." I scoff.

"Perhaps." He's still grinning. I cross my legs and lean my elbows onto the bare patches of my thighs so my hands can hold my head up. Damon pulls himself up onto his knees and rocks forward to slap a hand down on my shoulder. "Look," he starts in a firm voice. "Ric is back for the day. Your monsters are over the moon about some trip to the zoo in Richmond. Go get yourself some breakfast and have a nice little dysfunctional family day cooing over sea otters." He pats my shoulder and then presses on it for leverage as he stands. "I'll have all of this packed up and cleared away for safe keeping by the time you get back," he says as he looks past me at the armoire. Relief floods my chest at the possibility of handing away this one burden. I can be done. I can enjoy my children and breathe. Move on. At least I can start to.

The dread in my gut I haven't acknowledged vanishes. Damon figured out exactly what I needed, which was someone else to let me off the hook.

I glance up at him still staring at his brother's memories. His eyes are a little hooded and his expression dark as I stand to match him. It disappears so fast as he looks back at me with a smile, that it's hard to trust my own memory. But I caught it; it was there, and like that my gratitude twists uncomfortably into something else in my gut. I open my mouth to say something.

"But first change your pants," he interrupts. He's back to a smirk as he indicates the beyond distressed state of my jeans. He steals another glance at the cabinet of journals before sweeping off in the direction of the door with the intention of giving me privacy to change. "And take Bonnie and Elena with you too. I could use a day free of pants in my own house for a change." He throws it out as an afterthought, or at least he intends it to appear that way, but I can hear something pointed in his tone.

Selfish, grief-exhausted Caroline wants to let it go, to take the grinning gift horse at face value and let it walk away with the burdens it has so generously offered to unload from her shoulders. But Damon and I aren't just reluctant outliers in the same supernatural social circle anymore. We're family. I've never had siblings, so maybe I'm way off base. Maybe the right thing to do is to let him bury everything, to wait until he's ready to ask for a lifeline. Maybe calling him out will make him regret the day he ever called me sister.

But I don't give a shit. Because I'm here now, and I'm not about to wait for someone to ask for help who's clearly drowning.

"Damon?" His hand pauses on the doorknob as he looks back at me. "Are you sure? About Elena, I mean. Wouldn't the two of you like some time to yourselves? I'm sorry if having the kids here and everything, and I—we've all been in your space. I never meant to—I mean you and Elena haven't had the house to—" And that's the moment I realize what an idiot I've been. How absorbed I've been in my own world up here in this attic surrounded by my own grief. Because Damon and Elena haven't—well, they haven't been Damon and Elena since Elena woke up weeks ago—more than a month ago—two months? Has it been two months?

Damon's face blanches, his arm still awkwardly outstretched towards the door as a deep flush travels up his neck and into his cheeks. Is Damon blushing? That's something I don't think I've ever seen. But my amusement sours into guilt as I meet his eyes and find them stark and wide with fear instead of embarrassment.

A lot of things are starting to become very belatedly clear to me. Damon's good behavior, while I still believe comes from a genuine place, might not be as well adjusted as I had presumed. The alternative is something entirely scarier. While simultaneously dealing with his own grief and the grief of everyone in this house, Damon has buried himself in fear, guilt, and doubt, shielding himself from an inevitable fallout he thinks will destroy the little bit of stability he has clawed ahold of.

He still thinks if he loses Elena, he loses everything. That his entire worth resides in her approval. That realization uncomfortably tightens my chest as I cross the room to him.

"Caroline, stop!" He holds his open palm out between us, and I stop short of him. "Just don't, okay. Not today." He looks down at the floor and whispers, "Not yet," under his breath. Maybe he knows I can hear or he's forgotten, but either way I don't think it's meant for me.

My skin flashes hot with shame, because I didn't see it. Damon and Elena—endgame, happily ever after, perfect—that was always a foregone conclusion. I never stopped to imagine that I'd see the same insecurity I've struggled with my whole life reflected in a human Damon Salvatore's eyes. That I'd recognize the exact question that haunts him, the confident man I resentfully admired as he and his brother taught me two different sides of accepting who I was as a vampire. Because it's haunted me too.

_Am I enough?_

I close the distance between us and take the limp hand hanging at his side despite whatever boundaries it breaks. Whatever he says, this is all I wanted in the world when I felt like I would never be enough.

"Damon." After a moment he looks up from the floor and meets my eyes. "You and Elena? Have you talked? Have you given her the journals yet?" His eyes and expression grow darker with each question so that I don't need an answer.

I bite back a bit of my own anger. Because, Jeezus Damon, you've left my friend in the dark for so long. I've been so stupid. Read everything wrong.

The time before Elena's resurrection is so much of a blur, but one thing I don't think any of us doubted was that Damon and Elena would make it work. That if after forgiving everything in Damon's past already, these transgressions, so many of them a result of Damon truly struggling to be good and do right, while painful would be the simplest to forgive. That once they were together, human and together, their life would begin. After Bonnie and I gave Damon the journals from Elena's sleep to give to her when he was ready to tell her everything, I began preparing myself for the pain of seeing them together, of existing in the sphere of their happiness. When she woke and didn't come to us, I assumed she and Damon talked. I assumed the palpable tension was a side affect of recovering from his confessions, but it was always clear how much they loved one another. I assumed they were stealing all of their heated kisses and passionate displays behind closed doors out of courteous or even guilty respect for the rest of us still grieving. If I saw pain in their eyes, then that was to be expected, but at least they had each other; they were grieving together.

I never imagined this.

I push the anger down. Not a small part of it is directed at myself, if I'm being honest.

"I will," he starts. "I know I shouldn't have waited this long, and I don't always come by the right thing as quickly as I should. But I promise I will. I just need—" His voice falters, his eyes already drifted away. I squeeze his hand in mine until he meets my eyes again.

"Good," I say, and immediately feel like a bitch as his eyebrows scrunch further together in guilt and determination. "Because my friend has laid in the dark long enough, don't you think?" He nods, defeated. "But that isn't what I need you to hear right now?" I use our clasped hands to yank him down to my height, reveling the tiniest bit in my new strength over him as he groans. "Whatever happens with Elena, Damon, I'm not going anywhere. We're family now. Whether you like it or not, you're stuck with me. Got it?" His eyes are inches from mine as I watch them widen, his face slacken, and his lips part. I tug him down a little further, plant a kiss on his forehead, and then slap him on the cheek before releasing him.

He pulls up to his full height again, rubbing at his cheek. "I always knew I was gonna live to regret turning you, Blondie," he says with a scowl in his eyes and smirk curling into his uninjured cheek.

I wave him off with my hand. "Now, out with you so I can get dressed."

He rolls his eyes before covering them with his hand and beginning to grasp for the door with the other. "Not like it's anything I haven't seen before," he mutters under his breath.

"Hey, I heard that. Gross." And I chuck a pillow at him from the bed. He fends it off, proving how very little his hand was actually impacting his sight. He grins and reaches for the door in earnest this time. "Damon," I drop the laugh from my voice. Like a stain in my favorite blouse, now that I've seen it I can't help but notice the fracture of insecurity that cracks through his features as he looks back at me. "Have a little faith, okay. In Elena and yourself. Don't wait too long."

The door is already pulled open as he nods.

"Nobody's got time for shit that makes them miserable when they don't have to be, especially you old man."

**Whaddya think? I really wanna know. Drop a review and put me out of my misery, lol. **


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